The Fight We Have Left

On the /r/TumblrInAction subreddit, in a comment, /u/Be3Al2Si6O18 said

> The problem now is that we have a generation with very little to fight for

I disagree, which I think makes the problem you outline worse. Has the battle been won for a lot of groups’ legal rights and at least popular opinion? For the most part. In the Western world, anyhow. Being black or gay won’t get you in legal trouble. Being LGBT or irreligious might get you kicked out of the house if you’re a kid with your parents. Homicide rates are still pretty disproportionate (and while you can handwave racial disparities with wealth disparities, gay people and transsexuals come from all wealth classes pretty randomly).

Which really gets to the yet bigger issue of labour and wealth disparity. Somehow the left in moving to identity politics has neglected to fight for labour and in that time wealth disparities have soared in quite a few countries. Hell, race in America was invented as a concept to make the lower class fight amongst themselves before they’d realize they’d be better off overthrowing the guy cracking the whip. In the richest country in the world people are dying because they don’t have enough money and we’ve somehow become afraid to demand a distribute of wealth that works better for all of society rather than the short term interests of a select few.

There’s a shitload of fighting left to do.

Of course, part of the issue of bad focus comes from who’s doing the shifting. The big civil rights movements generally came from a more desperate point. But the people moving the focus to shit like otherkin generally have a good amount of comfort otherwise. Hell, they spend half the day on tumblr. That’s not encouraging to go out and fight. But it’s sure as hell a more comfortable target for the media to look at than bigger issues with either a smaller affected group (transsexuals being killed) or that might hurt those with extant power (wealth disparity).